Use It Against Me

coffee, part 1.

Over the years, I have struggled immensely with finding the courage to trust other people’s intentions in getting to know me. The process of befriending someone is still a great mystery to me, as in how I am even supposed to approach the issue, and I’m sure a lot of you share the same sentiment. How am I supposed to know what to tell the other person about me without coming across as too forthcoming? How am I supposed to differentiate those who genuinely want to be friends with me out of those who wish to get closer to me only for the purpose of gathering more things to hurt me with?

As a Kid, the thought of someone gaining my trust by expressing interest in my hobbies and the things I loved the most for the sake of causing me suffering was completely foreign to me. It was not because I had not met a single person who had had done that to me in the past, it was because I just could not fathom that there truly were people like that in this world. Many call this kind of mindset naïveté, and that word, as we all know, carries a negative connotation with it. But when we are talking about a child…I don’t think being naive should be a punishable trait. But that is, evidently, not how this world works. 

Because no matter how difficult it was for me to even begin to grasp the idea that someone would want to be my Friend just to hurt me, that is how the cookie crumbles. And that is why I still, to this day, do not know how I am expected to trust anyone I do not already know. 

My Friends were really good at pretending. They were good at pretending to care about me, to be interested in what I had to say, to act the role of an innocent bystander who had never done anything wrong. They excelled at gaining my trust by asking me questions that they knew held meaning to me. They asked about my favorites of all kinds, colors, animals, hobbies, tv shows. Back then, to me it really seemed like they just wanted to get to know me better, so that they’d be an even better Friend to me. Looking back on these memories, I can see the glistening, greasy sheen of butter they’d spread on top of my skin, without me seeing anything at the time. 

coffee, part 2.

They used to tell me it was because of the greasy oils seeping through my skin barrier. I had a bit too much of oily stuff going on there to notice.

So I told them what I loved to do in my free-time, what my hobbies were, what colors I’d asked my mom to cover my tiny bedroom in. I showed them the drawings I had been doodling instead of listening to the teacher talk about punctuation rules I had just had an extensive conversation on with my dad a week prior. And I told them about my favorite books that I’d read so many times already the paperback covers were creased and flaking at the seams, to the point I had voluntarily put contact paper on top of them to protect them from the stains of my leaking markers and eyes. 

And what did they do with all that information, you may ask?

Well, to that I say: have you ever wondered why I have never talked about where my chosen pen name comes from?

Mending the torn pages,

ichigonya